


Night Terrors

by Yatzstar



Series: Pit Brothers [4]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Blackmail, Brotp, Gen, Intimidation, Male Friendship, Mild body horror?, i like to think starscream gets so used to soundwave just standing there quietly, mentions of past character death, that he forgets what this dude is capable of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:02:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28080609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yatzstar/pseuds/Yatzstar
Summary: After discovering his illicit activities have been closely monitored, Starscream decides to take matters into his own hands and pay Soundwave a late-night visit.
Relationships: Megatron & Soundwave
Series: Pit Brothers [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954684
Comments: 8
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

The first thing Soundwave saw was a blinding flash, followed by searing pain that tore through his systems, wrenching him from stasis as suddenly as a starquake splits a magnetar. His circuits went haywire, joints convulsing, and he knew immediately the source—electric shock.

But Soundwave was a gladiator. Thus he did not lose his head for a moment even as his uncontrollable spasms sent him tumbling from the berth onto the floor. One leg shot out like a piston and impacted upon something solid, followed by a screech the dark mech knew all too well. But he could react no further, for his vision was still full of sparks, electricity coursing through his frame rendering him paralyzed and half-stunned.

A pede hooked Soundwave’s chassis, rolling him onto his back. The spy stared up at crimson optics, a baleful, arrogant sneer he had felt upon him many times, but had never before been acted upon. Energon oozed neon blue from a gash on the other mech’s faceplate where Soundwave’s razor heelstrut had gouged into it, and the sight gave the dark bot some satisfaction even as he continued to convulse helplessly upon the floor.

“Dear Soundwave, I knew you weren’t the social type, but is that any way to welcome a guest?” Starscream chided, leaning on the prod gripped in his servo and wiping energon from his faceplate. The grating tone of his voice indicated his pride was tarnished by the minor wound, but he was keeping his temper in check for the time being. “All I wanted to do was drop by and have a little chat, just the two of us.”

Soundwave tried to twist himself towards the wall behind him, to strike it, anything to make a noise. Megatron’s quarters were just beyond, if he could only alert him—

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother with that,” Starscream said, giving a cruel smile at his victim’s efforts. “Megatron will not be aware of anything for some time. Quite amazing what a little sedative slipped into his pre-stasis energon dose will do; I must try it more often.”

With every passing moment the electricity coursed through Soundwave’s systems, he fought to contain the panic threatening to overwhelm him. He had been in such situations before, but never from within his own faction. He had to use his limited range of motion to play up the frightened victim, keep Starscream talking while he formulated a plan.

“Do not worry, our lord will wake at his usual time as if nothing had happened,” the silver seeker assured him, taking a cruel pleasure in the distressed movements of his prey’s helm toward the wall where Megatron’s quarters lay beyond. “But until then, the ship could break apart around him and he would not stir.”

Starscream leaned down to caress the dark mech’s jaw with one razor digit, his voice low and predatory. “I’ve got you all to myself.”

The seeker saw the motion of Soundwave’s visor to look past him and chuckled darkly. He turned to follow his victim’s gaze to where a small, birdlike figure sat motionless upon the floor, apparently having fallen from its berth in a similar manner to Soundwave.

“Unfortunately, dearest Laserbeak will not be accompanying us tonight,” Starscream informed the slender mech before him, crimson optics like burning coals in the dim room. “It only took a minor jolt to short-circuit him; he never even saw me coming.”

The light mech took an involuntary step back as Soundwave’s tendrils lashed out, but these too fell uselessly to the floor, writhing under the effect of the electricity still engulfing their bearer. Starscream smiled, knowing he had hit a soft spot with the minicon and relishing the feeling of power. At last, the tables were turned.

“I understand you once had many like Laserbeak,” The seeker remarked, his tone deceptively casual. “Eons ago, before the war. What were some of their names? Rumble, Frenzy, Ravage…ah, so many lost, some even perishing in your very servos. Now, our dear little friend is the only survivor. It would be a great tragedy if anything were to befall him.”

Soundwave’s posture gave no reaction to this remark save for the odd convulsion. But Starscream felt the spy’s stare burning into him beneath the visor and smiled.

“I knew you’d catch on,” the seeker purred, placing one knee upon the dark mech’s chassis and leaning down until their faceplates were inches apart. “You’re a smart bot, after all. _Too_ smart, in fact, for my liking.”

Here Starscream’s amusement faded, turning to pent-up resentment. “I understand you and your little birdie have been watching me,” he growled. “You’ve been recording my every move, and like a good dog, taking that information back to our dear Megatron.”

Soundwave allowed himself no reaction to this news, but internally his mind was racing. So _that_ was what the seeker was after.

Starscream extended razor digits, hooking the silent bot beneath the jaw and tipping his helm up to expose the fragile mechanisms of his throat. “I do hope you have not forgotten that I am still your superior,” he said, his voice a low, deadly croon. “And I do not take kindly to being spied upon by my subordinates. How might I go about punishing such improper behavior?”

Soundwave lay very still, his systems near overclocking. The electricity was almost flushed from his circuits, he needed only a few moments more. Until then, he had to exercise extreme caution. Under normal circumstances, he could squash the seeker without a second thought, but the current odds were not in his favor should the situation go south.

A sudden stab of pain upon his neck brought Soundwave’s attention sharply back to the crimson optics hovering an inch from his face.

“Are you listening to me?” Starscream grated out, his teeth bared in a snarl. One needle-sharp digit pierced the throat of the mech beneath him, carving across the mechanisms and leaving a trail of energon oozing in its wake. Soundwave clenched his jaw, not giving the seeker the pleasure of a reaction. His pain tolerance was high after eons in the pits—Starscream would have to do better than that.

As if sensing the dark mech’s shift in demeanor, Starscream’s optics narrowed. “Allow me to give you something to remember me by,” he rasped, extending his claws fully and penetrating the spy’s throat just enough for energon to ooze forth. “Something to remind you not to slither those tendrils of yours into places they have no business being.”

The electricity was nearly out of Soundwave’s systems, and a subtle flex of his digits, a clasp of the tendrils confirmed he had regained his motion. But Starscream still knelt upon his chassis, and one wrong move could send those razor claws slicing through the energon line to his head.

“Let me be crystal clear,” Starscream went on, digging his claws into Soundwave’s throat, unaware of his victim’s regained control. “Should I catch you spying on me again, there _will_ be consequences. I am not so fool as to take you on myself, but let us simply say that…well, every little bird falls from the sky eventually.”

He leaned down, so close to Soundwave’s visor that his optics reflected on the sheet of dark glass. “Are we clear, dearest Soundwave?”

The dark bot stared back into burning optics. The seeker’s head filled his entire field of view, but Soundwave did not need to see to know where his tendrils would land, crackling with electricity.

Starscream screeched, his form twisting as the dark bot’s tendrils latched onto him, one onto the back of the silver mech’s helm, the other on the servo gripping the prod. The seeker staggered upright, but this did more harm than good. In one swift motion, Soundwave whisked his legs from between Starscream’s ankles and sent one pede smashing into the other bot’s chassis like a cannon shot, launching the smaller mech into the far wall where he slid to the floor, electricity wracking his circuits.

“N-now, Soundwave, let us discuss this,” Starscream sputtered out, all his bravado gone at the sight of that faceless, looming dread rising to swallow him in shadow. “I may have gotten, ah, _too heated_ in my chastisement—”

Soundwave took a step towards him, and pure panic overtook the seeker. He screamed, trying to scrabble away, but met only the unyielding metal wall. The dark bot paced toward him, his steps as silent as inevitable doom, right up until the moment one long servo shot out, wiry digits wrapping around Starscream’s neck and pinning him to the floor as though he weighed nothing.

“You wouldn’t kill me, would you?” Starscream choked out a pathetic plea, his optics wide and frightened in his narrow face. The dark bot hovered over him like a black omen, tendrils coiling like serpents ready to strike. “What would Megatron say?”

Soundwave almost felt like laughing—rich of Starscream to invoke the warlord after all he had done.

But the seeker had a point, and like it or not, Starscream outranked him, even if the gladiator’s code permitted the assault of a superior in self-defense. Much as Soundwave would have preferred otherwise, he would let Megatron decide the treacherous seeker’s ultimate fate.

Under normal circumstances, the spy would simply move on, but Starscream had attempted to blackmail him with Laserbeak, a move Soundwave was not about to forgive so lightly. He would just have to curtail the other mech’s arrogance a touch, remind him who he was dealing with…but how, without injuring him?

Ah. That was how.

The dark mech’s other servo came up, and Starscream cringed, expecting retribution for the wounds he had inflicted on the other bot’s throat. But he would have preferred a hundred such wounds to what came instead.

Long, spidery digits clasped the edges of the visor. Expelled air broke in a soft stream upon Starscream’s petrified faceplate as the space behind the glass was decompressed. Soundwave lowered his visor, and Starscream looked in abject horror upon the face of the faceless.

Fire flickered in the recesses of jagged optics, reflecting in crimson dread upon the mass of contorted, visceral plating that was the dark bot’s face. Starscream felt he gazed upon that which was never meant to be seen, like the singularity forever cloaked from observers behind its event horizon. Such things were too terrible for living eyes to comprehend.

Then Soundwave’s twisted lips parted. And Starscream discovered that his level of terror, which he had thought was at its maximum, was not quite so high as it might have been. For now he looked into a maw of black, needle-like teeth embedded in that eldritch dread of a faceplate.

Starscream lay paralyzed, his limbs rigid with terror as Soundwave leaned down, bringing that awful face nearer and nearer until it hovered just beside the seeker’s audio receptor. Not a sound penetrated the dim room.

Then into that silence spoke a voice as deep as the blackness of space.

“ _Soundwave: superior.”_

Starscream went limp beneath the slender mech. Soundwave drew back and saw the seeker had collapsed in a dead faint. A faint smile crossed the spy’s terrible visage before it was mercifully hidden once more behind his visor.

Laserbeak stirred, chirruping weakly as Soundwave knelt at his side, siphoning some of his energy to the minicon through his tendrils. The small bot gave a shudder, flushing the remaining sparks from his systems, and at a nod from his master, returned to his berth. Soundwave would not need him for what tasks remained.

The dark bot stepped into the hall with the limp form of the seeker slung over one shoulder and set off on noiseless pedes. A vehicon once spotted the silent mech passing with his burden from far down a corridor, but the trooper only shivered and turned away, pretending he had not seen. Soundwave’s business was Soundwave’s alone. It was better that way.

Reaching Starscream’s quarters, Soundwave deposited the seeker’s limp form in a heap on the floor and swiftly returned the way he had come. The silver mech no longer posed a threat for the time being, and come daylight, would doubtless receive a berating for oversleeping. But what would he say—that he had attempted blackmail but had been foiled? No, he would likely sputter an excuse about bad dreams or turbulence before retreating to nurse his bruised ego and cast murderous looks at his oppressors.

Reaching Megatron’s quarters, Soundwave let himself in and found the warlord just as Starscream had said—deep in stasis upon his berth, with no amount of Soundwave’s servo rapping upon his chassis able to elicit even a flicker of activity. But his systems registered nothing unexpected for one in stasis. Anger at Starscream still lingered, but for the moment, the dark bot’s worries for his brother were put to rest.

Soundwave knelt attentively beside the berth and folded his long servos across his knees to observe the warlord’s droning status readings upon his visor. He would return to stasis soon, after making thorough records of all that had happened. And tomorrow, he would inform his pit brother of everything.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay--school things have kept me busy ^^'

The next day, Soundwave was first up as always. He enjoyed the peace and quiet, the bridge’s consoles idling before the vehicons rose and filled the room with the sound of work. Out the viewports, the light of the not-yet-risen sun had swallowed all other stars, save for the last lingering jewel of Sol-2, or ‘Venus’ as Soundwave had discovered it was named.

The previous night’s events still ran through the silent bot’s mind. Habit urged him to brush off Starscream’s actions as a nuisance, but his practical side contested this notion. The seeker’s actions were getting bolder. Clearly, his failed assassination attempt in the spacebridge ruins had shown him that victory was indeed within his grasp—he only need keep trying.

And keep trying he had, as Soundwave had observed countless times via Laserbeak, ship security cameras, a tendril slithered into an adjacent room, and a dozen other methods of surveillance. Megatron boasted that nothing happened aboard the _Nemesis_ that he was not privy too, and this was true, but it was always Soundwave who was privy to it first.

Heavy steps broke into the dark mech’s musings. Familiar steps. And exactly on schedule. Starscream, for all his lies, had told the truth about that at least.

“I trust all is quiet?” came Megatron’s rumble, as gruff as ever, but benign to his brother.

Soundwave half turned, and a silent communication passed between the two bots. No, things had not been quiet, but some was left to unfold before it need be discussed.

“I see,” was Megatron’s only response, before he turned and headed for the main viewport to gaze out over the morning cloudscape. Soundwave returned to his work, contemplating what methods the warlord might use to beat Starscream within an inch of his spark _this_ time.

At last the vehicons filed in, and the bridge became alive with the sounds of consoles chirping, comms chattering, and the thud of footsteps. Morning had arrived at the Decepticon headquarters. Still, there was no sign of a certain seeker. Soundwave could feel Megatron looking at him quizzically, but the warlord made no comment. He knew the spy would divulge in good time.

The sun was well above the horizon when Soundwave caught movement in the corner of his visor. Not turning, he observed Starscream peeking around the doorway, crimson optics flicking between the sight of the Megatron’s broad back at the other end of the bridge, and a small cluster of vehicons. No doubt the seeker was hoping he could get in, issue a few orders to the troops, and get out without being noticed.

Starscream’s eyes widened, and he ducked out of sight a moment before Megatron’s footsteps reached Soundwave’s receptors, drawing up behind the silent bot.

“I see our late sleeper had finally roused himself,” the warlord remarked, keeping his voice low so that only Soundwave could hear. “Will you tell me now what is going on?”

Soundwave turned and paced toward the door on silent pedes, Megatron close behind. As they passed the threshold, the warlord barked out a command, drowning the surprised squawk of a certain seeker. “Starscream, watch the bridge. And please, _do_ try to refrain from wrecking my ship.”

“O-of course, Lord Megatron,” the silver mech stammered out, trying to compose himself, but the two bots had already passed him by. It only took a moment for Starscream to get over his surprise, but already the larger mechs were out of sight. He had scarcely had time to notice Soundwave during the brief encounter, but now a shiver rattled his plating at the recollection of the dark room, and the slender mech looming over him like death itself.

In a quiet, little-used corridor, Megatron and Soundwave sequestered themselves from any curious vehicons who might pass by. The moment Soundwave turned to face his brother, the warlord’s fiery optics narrowed.

“Your throat,” he said, placing a delicate servo beneath Soundwave’s jaw and tipping the silent mech’s helm up to expose the punctures marring the fragile mechanisms. Megatron did not waste time asking who the culprit was—that was all too obvious, instead turning to more practical questions. “How deep? Are they serious?”

The dark bot brushed aside his brother’s servo, echoing the warlord’s sentiment from Kaon in eons past: _“’If you’re still venting, you can walk it off!’”_

Megatron could not resist a chuckle at the other mech’s jest, but his optics quickly darkened once more. “Tell me everything.”

And Soundwave did, replaying upon his visor the previous night’s events as he had recorded them. Megatron saw everything as Soundwave had seen it—Starscream’s threats, his attempted blackmail, and the spy’s retribution. The visual went dead for several moments during the interval in which Soundwave had removed his visor, returning to the sight of the unconscious seeker. The warlord watched all in silence, his expression unreadable.

The recording ended, freezing on the sight of Megatron’s drugged form in stasis. The silver mech said nothing as Soundwave allowed his visor to go dark once more.

Then Megatron spoke, and his voice was like death. “I will tear out that treacherous cur’s spark with my _teeth,_ should he _dare_ lift a servo to you again.”

He gave a low growl, turning away from Soundwave as he strove to contain his rising temper. “Much as I would like to make his death last for an eon, he is more useful to me alive. But he will suffer for this nonetheless.”

The warlord looked back at Soundwave, one eyebrow arched. “Unless you would care to do it? It is personal for you after all, and you have not had a good torture session since the war. As I recall, you could be quite creative.”

The spy considered these remarks. Such an offer was tempting—retribution was indeed in order, for both him and Laserbeak. He held no qualms about inflicting pain, though he did not like the mess such visceral business often generated. Furthermore, his highly sensitive audio receptors did not appreciate the screams.

And, on a more practical note, exacting his vengeance on Starscream had a high chance to ruin his reputation as a spy. What had cost Starscream was his underestimation of Soundwave’s prowess. Best to keep if that way. If word got out that he was not the simple computer bot most supposed, then others would start taking notice of him, and Soundwave would not have that. His place was in the shadows, always watching. Such reasons were why he had declined Megatron’s offer of commander.

The spy shook his head. Megatron nodded, unsurprised, but his expression showed a little disappointment nonetheless. “A pity. But I shall gladly take recompense in your stead. A blow against you is a blow against myself.”

He started to turn away, but Soundwave stopped him, one last question on his mind. How had Starscream discovered that Soundwave had been watching him?

Megatron’s scarlet optics narrowed. “This I do not know. You are far too clandestine to be detected, and he far too incompetent to discover you. The only other who knows of your operations is…”

The warlord broke off, his expression morphing to realization, then incredulity. “Of course...the caves...when I was preparing to exterminate him…”

He clamped his mouth shut before he could continue, his face one of complete mortification, but Soundwave’s agile mind worked faster. Swifter than thought, the silent mech punched the other bot in the chassis, all his body language shouting out in mock offense: _you_ _thoughtless oaf,_ _when will you learn to attach a brake on that motor-vocorder of yours, you fragging_ _idiot_ _? Primus, you’re such a_ _dunce_ _!_

“Yes, yes, I suppose I deserved that,” Megatron admitted gruffly, massaging his chassis where the other mech had struck it. How could one with such slender servos hit so hard? “You needn’t rub it in any further.”

He looked at Soundwave again, and his expression softened by a hair’s breadth. Eons of brutality had stripped him of the ability to do much more, but his brother evoked in him sentiments that had long since been desolate to any other.

“Swear to me that you will visit Knock Out,” Megatron insisted. He slid a servo beneath Soundwave’s jaw and lifted the dark mech’s head once more to observe the wounds. “Your vocorder is rusty enough without it getting infected. Primus only knows where that wretch’s claws have been.”

The warlord’s tone was slowly becoming harsher, and Soundwave knew he was getting himself worked up again. Even so, Megatron’s touch was always gentle with his brother.

“Now, I have business to take care of,” the silver mech said decisively, clasping his massive servos behind his back, once more the face of the Decepticons. “You may want to take your work elsewhere—I plan to make an example of Starscream before the whole ship, so I will need the bridge. I know you value your peace and quiet.”

Beneath his visor, Soundwave arched a twisted eyebrow, his posture posing the only remaining question: how long?

Megatron waved a dismissive servo. “I do not expect to see you again until tonight,” he said, then bared cruel teeth at the dark bot in a wolfish grin. “It would be best to see Knock Out sooner rather than later. I have a feeling he will be quite occupied for the next few days.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am beginning to see what the TFP showrunners were talking about--is it such fun to write Starscream getting owned.


End file.
